Born Liars (26 page)

33
. Lee was particularly struck by a piece of research from Italy showing that children agreed that all lying was wrong,
unless
the lie in question was endorsed by a priest.

34
. Burton intended his book to act as a counterweight to the slew of popular psychology books urging us to trust in our intuitions, a trend started by Malcolm Gladwell's
Blink,
which suggested that ‘instant cognition' is often wiser than years of study or the sifting of evidence. Burton's point is not that we should disregard our intuitions about people or situations when we're trying to work out what we think – such feelings can indeed provide very significant data, rooted as they often are in sophisticated unconscious processes. But the more certain we feel, the more we should question ourselves, interrogate other possibilities, and listen to contradictory opinions. Always blink twice.

Robert Feldman's book
Liar: The Truth About Lying
summarises his research on the topic and is a good survey of the role of lies in everyday life. Bella DePaulo's work in this area is essential, and a guide to it can be found at her website, www.belladepaulo.com. It was Byrne and Whiten's theory of Machiavellian Intelligence that first made me think about a book on lying, and when researching a piece for
The Times
science supplement,
Eureka
, I was lucky enough hear about the development of this theory from Richard Byrne himself. He pointed me in the direction of Nicholas Humphrey's seminal paper ‘The Social Function of Intellect'. Robin Dunbar's theory about the importance of social groups to brain size can be found in his book
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language
amongst other places. The anecdotes about primate deceit are drawn from Byrne and Whiten's
Machiavellian Intelligence
and from Frans de Waal's work, including
Our Inner Ape
, a successor to
Chimpanzee Politics
. I found the stories about Barnum and Jerry Andrus in a piece by Errol Morris for the
New York Times
, entitled ‘Seven Lies About Lying'. George Steiner's thoughts on the importance of lying to human development can be found in his book
After Babel
. Bernard Knox writes about the contrast between Odysseus and Achilles in the introduction to Robert Fagles's translation of
The Odyssey
(I thank Stephen Brown for the pointer).

Vasudevi Reddy's book
How Infants Know Minds
explores the mental and social development of very young children and their burgeoning skills of fakery and deception. Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee have probably done the most and the best work on the topic of children and lying, and their lucidly written papers are well worth reading. I'm grateful to Victoria Talwar for sharing with me her paper on punitive environments and for taking me through her fieldwork in West Africa. Simon Baron-Cohen's essay ‘I Cannot Tell a Lie – What people with autism can tell us about honesty'
can be found online, at the website of the periodical
In Character
. I was alerted to Sir Thomas Browne's take on lying while reading the very stimulating
A Pack of Lies: Towards A Sociology of Lying
, by J.A. Barnes. Readers interesting in learning more about Browne, a fascinating figure who had much to say about the nature of truth (and many other things), might start with
The World Proposed
, a collection of essays about him and his work, edited by Reid Barbour and Claire Preston.

William Hirstein's book
Brain Fiction
is a good overview of the significance of confabulation and its links to self-deception and storytelling. Will Self was generous enough to spend time discussing with me the nature of his creative process as part of my research for a previous book that never saw the light of day; I'm glad to be able to use some of his illuminating insights here (it was he who put me on to David Hume's thoughts on the nature of imaginative creation). The story of Jonathan Aitken's fictional car chase is drawn from
The Liar
, by Luke Harding, David Leigh and David Pallister, a compelling account of the court case as seen from the
Guardian
's side. My description of Marlon Brando's acting class is based on the journalist Jod Kaftan's account of his relationship with the great man, first published in
Rolling Stone
, though I heard it in an episode of National Public Radio's
This American Life
to which Kaftan contributed. I first read about Charles Limb's experiment with jazz musicians on the superb psychology blog
Mind Hacks
, the point of embarkation for many a journey. I'm indebted to Jonah Lehrer's various reflections on the mental processes behind creativity, including his excellent piece on it for
Seed
magazine. I read about the experiment on high-creativity versus high-IQ students in Robert Sternberg's comprehensive survey of the field, the
Handbook of Creativity
. I spoke to Adrian Raine about his research on the psychopathic brain when researching a piece about his work for
Eureka
.

Along with many other people I first read about the work of Paul Ekman in Malcolm Gladwell's essay for the
New Yorker
, ‘The Naked Face'. Ekman's own books, including
Telling Lies
and
Why Kids Lie
offer highly readable introductions to his work on facial expressions and deception. I'm grateful to Robert Hunter for discussing with me the theory and practice of lie detection and its relevance to legal process, and for the concept of ‘the demeanour assumption'. I came across the research on rape investigations at
Deception Blog
(
http://deception.crimepsychblog.com
), a wonderful trove of links to contemporary deception research, the discovery of which helped convince me that there was a book to be written on this subject (I thank its anonymous compiler). I became interested in the Charles Ingram case after reading an article by Jon Ronson for the
Guardian
in which he reconsiders his earlier assessment of Ingram's guilt after reading James Plaskett's meticulous dissection of the prosecution case, available online. The analysis of the Iranian election was published in the
Washington Post
shortly after the election had taken place. Its statistical reasoning has subsequently been questioned; those wishing to follow the debate may start here:
http://bit.ly/fqGQ3T
. I offer it here as a vivid example of a very interesting new discipline.

My account of the polygraph's invention and development relies heavily on Ken Alder's exhaustively researched social history,
The Lie Detectors
. I also referred to the very readable report on the polygraph produced by National Academy of Sciences, available free online, as is the Pentagon's 2001
Annual Report on the Polygraph
. Tim Weiner, David Johnston and Neil Lewis write about Aldrich Ames's encounters with the polygraph in their book
Betrayal
. I first came across Ames's letter to Steven Aftergood on the wonderful
Letters of Note
blog. I am grateful to Ruben Gur, Daniel Langleben and Jane Campbell Moriarty for sharing with me their expertise on the new forms of lie detection technology; any views expressed here are very much my own. Ian Herbert's excellent discussion of the power of false confessions in court cases led me to the Bill Bosko case and to the research of Saul Kassin. Elizabeth Loftus's papers are all well-written, colourful and worth reading in the original, as are her books. William Saletan has written a very good survey of Loftus's career for
Slate
magazine. My account of the Paul Ingram case relies largely on the work of Lawrence Wright, whose reports on the case originally appeared in the
New Yorker
before being published in the form of a book,
Remembering Satan
. I also referred to a detailed account of the case written by Ethan Watters for
Mother Jones
magazine
.

My account of how the brain creates its version of reality owes a very significant debt to Chris Frith's excellent, accessible overview of the subject,
Making Up The Mind,
and to a conversation I had with him after reading it. I found the phrase that I borrow from David Eagleman in the transcript of a conversation he had with Robert Krulwich for NPR, available online. Reed Albergotti wrote about the mystery of Larry Fitzgerald's ‘blind' catching for the
Wall Street Journal
. The experiment involving love on a precarious bridge, and the patient who suffered from a lack of proprioception, are both described in Timothy Wilson's
Strangers to Ourselves
, a powerful argument for the importance of unconscious processes to our behaviour and moods. Petter Johansson was kind enough to spend time with me discussing his research (as well as explaining exactly how that sleight-of-hand worked). Michael Gazzaniga writes compellingly about his work with split-brain patients in his book
The Social Brain
, among other places, and Daniel Dennett has been the primary exponent of the implications of Gazzaniga's work for our ideas about consciousness. I first came across Arthur Schopenhauer's description of the novelistic mind in John Gray's book
Straw Dogs
. In
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater offers fresh insight into the significance of Leon Festinger's fieldwork with the Lake City cultists. I've been fascinated by the story of Sabbatai Zevi ever since reading about it in Paul Johnson's
A History of the Jews
. The definitive book on the Zevi phenomenon is by the historian Gershom Scholem. I also found Matt Goldish's account of the Sabbatean movement helpful.

Shelley Taylor is the most lucid exponent of her own research, and I have based my account of her work on her book
Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind
. I first heard about Caroline Starek's research on self-deception and championship swimming while listening to an episode of the NPR programme ‘RadioLab'
,
an early influence on my thinking; I'm grateful to the RadioLab team for this and for generally being such an splendidly fertile source of stimulation and inspiration – anyone who hasn't checked out their podcasts should do so at the earliest opportunity. Virginia Postrel's short but incisive article ‘In Praise of Irrational Exuberance' (available online) pointed me to the passage I quote from Adam Smith, and to Colin Campbell's take on consumerism. My version of Pizarro's rout of Atahualpa's army is based on the first-hand accounts quoted in Jared Diamond's
Guns, Germs and Steel
, and I borrowed the idea of juxtaposing that episode to Custer's Last Stand from Dominic Johnson – indeed, much of this chapter was inspired by Johnson's eye-opening exploration of the role of over-confidence in warfare, in his book
Overconfidence and War
. My conversation with Kevin Woods about his work on the Iraq Perspectives Project was one of the most fascinating I had in the course of researching this book, and his report is essential reading if you're interested in the background to the war (as is the Duelfer Report).

The literature on placebo effects is wide. Dylan Evans's book
Placebo
is a good place to start. I found Michael Brooks's cogent and perceptive overview of the topic in
Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense
to be very helpful. Anne Harrington's books offer rich historical context. Daniel Moerman's
Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect'
contains the most penetrating arguments about this phenomenon, placing it in a wider context of culture and meaning, and questioning the capacity of medical science as currently constituted to fully explain it. My account of Henry Beecher's discovery is drawn from a combination of these sources and Beecher's own published papers. Robert Darnton's
Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
offers a lively account of Mesmer's rise and fall. Other places to read about this extraordinary episode include Claude-Anne Lopez's lively essay and Stacey Schiff's masterly account of Franklin's years in Paris.

My interest in this subject was sparked by Steve Silberman's excellent report for
Wired
, available online. I heard about the Diamond Shreddies case study when watching the video of Rory Sutherland's talk at TED Global 2009, and the campaign's originator Hunter Somerville was kind enough to tell me the story from his side. I was inspired to explore the research into wine tasting after reading Jonah Lehrer's discussion of it in his book
The Decisive Moment
. I came across Mark Zborowski's anthropological investigation of the nature of pain in Daniel Moerman's book, and read about Zborowski's extraordinary life in Steven Zipperstein's essay for the
Jewish Review of Books
.

I relied on multiple sources for my brief history of the Christian church's relationship with lying, including and especially Johann Somerville's essay ‘The New Art of Lying', in Leites's
Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe
, and Perez Zagorin's overview of lying and religion in the early modern period,
Ways of Lying
. Christopher Devlin's biography of Robert Southwell covers his dangerous expedition to England, and Antonia Fraser's history of the Gunpowder Plot has more on the capture and trial of Henry Garnet. Anyone wanting to explore the life and thoughts of Benjamin Constant should pick up
The Cambridge Companion to Constant
, which includes an essay by Stephen Holmes, who was kind enough to share his knowledge of the debate between Constant and Kant with me in conversation, and who, in so doing, helped me join some of the dots in my thinking. I found the example of the Manam islanders, and summaries of Frederick Bailey and Janet Suskind's findings, in J.A. Barnes's
A Pack of Lies
.

The story of Quesalid, although first published by Franz Boas, became better known when it was retold in an essay by Claude Levi-Strauss called ‘The Sorcerer And His Magic'. Erving Goffman's thoughts on the theatrical nature of real life can be found in his classic work,
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
. The Wallace Stevens quote is from
Adagia
, the poet's collection of aphorisms. The full quote is as follows: ‘The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe it willingly.'